Blue Screen of Death Survival Guide: Every Error Explained

I Run Vista, so I'm Immune to BSoDs, Right?

Unfortunately, no. A common misconception is that blue screens don't even exist in Vista, but not only are they still there, but we're here to tell you we've seen them first hand. The good news is Microsoft put a lot of work into how Vista handles critical errors and other glitches that in previous OSes would cause a system crash. Most of the time, if a problem occurs, Vista will attempt to fix the problem without any interruption. For example, if your videocard crashes, you may see a message saying "Display driver stopped responding and has recovered." In XP and previous OSes, this almost always would have resulted in a system crash.

In some cases, Vista will be unable recover on its own, and the result is a blue screen. By default, Vista will reboot itself after briefly flashing the blue screen. It happens so fast you might miss it, but once Windows reloads, you'll be greeted with an error message similar to the above. You can try clicking the 'Check for solution' button, just as you can try your hand playing the lotto. Neither one is likely to result in anything.

Instead, scroll down and take note of the blue screen codes. Armed with this information, you can perform your own detective work. Alternately, if you'd prefer to see the actual blue screen rather than automatically rebooting, right-click the My Computer icon on your desktop, select Properties, and click on Advanced System Settings. In the System Properties window that appears, select the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery, and uncheck the box that says 'Automatically Restart.' The same steps also apply to XP.

In another nod towards streamlining the troubleshooting process, Vista's Problem Reports and Solutions wizard can save you oodles of time in PC detective work, and may even alert you to potential conflicts you weren't even aware existed. You can find this applet by name in your Control Panel, or just type Problem Reports and Solutions in Vista's search box. Once loaded, click 'Check for new solutions' in the left-hand column. If Vista finds any conflicts, it will list them in the main window, along with any potential resolutions.

Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) Image Gallery

Olympic Size FailAt the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, an XP system failed during the opening ceremony. That would have been fine, except that the failed system was beaming images in the Birds Nest for all to see, and what everyone saw was an Olympic sized BSoD!

Presentation Gone WrongBill Gates could do nothing by smile awkwardly during a Windows 98 presentation that quickly took a turn for the hilarious. While trying to demonstrate how easy it is to install a scanner via USB, the system crashed into a BSoD in front of a live audience. Do'h!

Denver, We Have a ProblemFlickr's a great place to look up BSoD errors, and this one shows an alarming error screen in a Denver airport. Hopefully any would-be passengers who saw this weren't afraid of flying.

Hey, At Least It's Free!It's nice that a company is offering passersby free Internet service. What's not so nice is the BSoD that reared its ugly head and ruined the experience for anyone hoping to hop on the web to check their email. Oh well, that's what smartphones are for, right?

Touch of FailIn Microsoft's defense, there's nothing particularly brilliant about a feature phone. That said, Samsung couldn't have been too happy that this electronic ad that crashed into a BSoD, though it obviously didn't prevent the company from selling a quintillion phones since then.

Well, That Explains Steam OS!Gabe Newell hasn't been bashful about his contempt towards Windows 8. What's with all the hate? If we're playing armchair psychologist, we'd say Newell still harbors deep seeded resentment from when a BSoD left him flustered at an awards ceremony.

Your Money is Safe! No, Really!Did you know that most ATMs are running Windows XP, the same OS that Microsoft is getting ready to stop supporting? Hopefully it won't lead to displays like this being commonplace, lest we have to start hiding money in the mattress again.

All Aboard!This display was supposed to be showing people ads as they entered the subway. Instead, it showed pedestrians an error message for several days before someone got around to rebooting the system.

Comments

Grammar? Sure looked like he was correcting spelling errors (that happened to slip by the spell checker AND EDITOR).

Considering how poorly most web posters write, I think we need as many articles with proper grammar, spelling and syntax, as possible. Frankly, if people who write for a living can't get it write [sic] and the editor misses it as well, then maybe the publication needs a new editor and writer.

I've just watched 1 very smart person waste the better part of a week getting Linux wireless to work on our network (never mind the peripheral players who spent hours of their time trying to help him).

In the end, he got it working, but he's not sure why it now works.

Until linux is truly plug and play, it's only for IT types, and as this week illustrated, even then it's not easy to set up....and several of those involved run Linux at home.

hmmmm let's see, 4 weeks of tweaking my system and pouring over Linux forums to get my system up and running only to be limited to running a handful of software - "Hey look at that cool new game I'm gonna go buy it and.... OH!, nm it won't run on Linux". Sure you can run X-Windows, but then, you're back to running Windows and put into the same possibiility of troubleshooting a BSOD. Besides, why run an emulator and suck up unnecessry resources in an emulator? Might as well just run Windows. Go troll elsewhere dude.....

Besides this article is long winded. Want to know how to REALLY troubleshoot a BSOD? Type the Hex code into Google, you'll have your answer and beging to be able to repair the problem from there.

Well, your comment is pretty clear about the fact you don't know a bit what you are talking about.

First of all, X-Window (notice, no s) isn't having anything to do with Windows. Just take a look at Wikipedia.

X-Window came to like in 1983 from the Carnegie-Mellon Andrew project while Windows 3.1 came to life in 1985, two years later. X-Window is built from start as a client-server graphical system on top of an OS, while Windows is an OS and not client-server at all.

Second, gaming is not all in life, most useful usage of a graphical system and a computer is not gaming, so, saying Linux is a piece of shit because your favorite game doesn't run natively on it is a very narrow biased evaluation of an OS as a whole.

The only people MORE annoying than Mac Fanboys are Linux Fanboys. You would think that by now people would realize that free is great, but it's not necessarily better. M$ has a lot of issues, but I'll take a half ass informative BSoD in Windows over a zero informative screen/computer freeze in Linux any day. Linux might be free, and yes it's come a long way over the years, but it's no better than Windows.

In your opinion. My opinion is Linux is better. I have run Windows since DOS,Win 3.1 till vista,Mac OSx. I still duel boot Vista/Linux mint and Linux mint doe's not crash on me and my CPU/HDD do not constantly run in the background. I'll keep Linux mint over Vista. I duel boot so my Kid can use Vista.

kinda hard to type in google from a BSoD you are not on the internet you computer is basicly dead. Do a reboot and it "Might" startup normaly might not. Nvidia is the biggest reason for crashes in Vista proven fact.

Because Linux freezing without giving you ANY information or giving you a black screen with a Kernel Fault error is SOOO much more helpful? BSoD's may be the most annoying part of Windows, but at least they can help you get to the root of most serious problems.

I've seen Ubuntu crash more than once, so quit acting like it's this invincible OS that doesn't crash. Likewise, I rarely see windows crash. Which crashes more? Hard to say, because I'm on windows far more than Linux, so I'd expect to see windows crash more....the reality is that I might see windows become unstable once or 2x/year on my machines. I've seen linux (Ubuntu) crash once (maybe 2x) in the past year.

They're both good operating systems that serve very different markets and very different purposes.

Then you better be prepared to differentiate. Average user isn't going to read this article and troubleshoot a BSOD. They will give their PC to me, I'll google the answer and fix it for them. To add to that they won't be running Linux either, just not ready for end user prime time. In my case, I have no problems with Blue screens in Vista on my rig. Why? cuz I know what I'm doing just like you do with Linux. If I do get a blue screen, it would be a 0x07b (failing hard drive) or a 0x05a (faulty RAM). In other words a hardware failure and last time I checked that wasn't an MS Programmign problem.

Games aren't just for kids. Saying that is shortsighted. I'm 34, been playing since Atari and don't plan on stopping anytime soon.

If MPC writes an article and calls it "Linux Kernel Faults and Hard Locks: Every Error Explained" I should post a comment to and say "what a bunch of crap, NOBODY should have to go through this hassle. This is the reason I run Vista! I never have these problems!"

Put a Linux live CD in your drive reboot Win PC and in Two minutes you are running Linux mint. No kidding. If you like what you see install it. You can duel boot for the times you have to have windows.

In January, I upgraded from one GTX260 to 2, after upgrading, every 15 min to as long as 8 hrs I would bluescreen, (yes, before the 2nd card was installed this never happened) I reinstalled Nvidia drivers (after compleatly uninstalling) and reinstalled chipset driver, in the end I had to disable SLI to get it to work, but i got the cards for gaming, so that wouldnt do, so I ended up reinstalling windows compleatly (I had vista business, changed to XP Pro./Vista Premium/Ubuntu Linux trippleboot). The bad thing is that when it BSODed, the screen went off for most of it and restarted with me only occationally seeing blue, WHOCRASHED would never tell me what the heck happened, and I only got the popup you mentioned for vista once. Any ideas?

"Alternately, if you'd prefer to see the actual blue screen rather than automatically rebooting, right-click the My Computer icon on your desktop, select Properties, and click on Advanced System Settings. In the System Properties window that appears, select the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery, and uncheck the box that says 'Automatically Restart.' The same steps also apply to XP."

Nice, but I would have added in a paragraph on how to use the address, given to you by the BSoD, and use the registy to find the piece of hdwr causing the problem. While the hdwr may not be the cause, it does (most of the time) point you in the right direction.

And always remember: "Nothing envolving computers is ever set in stone." My PC gave my a different reason for BSoD everytime for a month... turned out to be McAfee...

Nope, article was completely useless for the blue screen I had on my folks PC a few weeks ago.

Booting up Windows XP Home would only go so far in the 'black screen' boot logo part and then it would blue screen for a half second and automatically restart the computer. Problem is that Safe Mode, Last Known Good Config.. ect options would do the exact same thing. Basically had to move the drive to a different PC to see what was wrong. Bad sectors on the hard disk. Two journaling files, and two feedback files were corupted plus some odd registry settings. Now how the hell is one supposed to read the damn error message when it's on the screen for a milisecond and reboots the PC no matter what you try? Frustrating as hell.

Recently upgraded to IE8 and installed some Canon 620 drivers but never finished the installation since I have no clue on how to set the thing up to work wirelessly. Can't imaging either of those two causing problems. Have a old HP PSC 2100 AIO printer hooked up with drivers too but can't see how two printer drivers can't play nice either.

Sounds like your boot files for windows is messed up all you reall have to do is recover them... the recovery disc isn't always helpful but there are some free programs out there that will repair those files. There's a way to do it by hand too but if your not tech savy you should just reload your machine with a fresh install. I would suggest backing up your data as best you can in a few different locations. It's too easy to get your hands on a cheap external just make sure you format the new one to NTFS unless you're still useing something before XP. It's alot easier to recover the data when you drop it. Alot of HDD companies will ship them formatted FAT32 and that'sa not what you want... Unless, like I said before, you don't have an OS that supports it... But not alot of people run 98 any more. Sad, really miss that one...

"Alternately, if you'd prefer to see the actual blue screen rather than automatically rebooting, right-click the My Computer icon on your desktop, select Properties, and click on Advanced System Settings. In the System Properties window that appears, select the Advanced tab, click Settings under Startup and Recovery, and uncheck the box that says 'Automatically Restart.' The same steps also apply to XP."

And your comment is still exactly as ignorant as it was the first time.

All that linux in your brain, starting to make you repeat yourself repeat yourself. I agree with the guy above, the only person more annoying than a MAC whiner is a Linux whiner.

Have you ever noticed that glassy, sort of glazed-over retarded look your friends get on their faces every time you try to convince them of why they need to switch to Linux? This is caused by the fact that your constant nagging about linux is RIDICULOUSLY ANNOYING, and NOBODY EXCEPT YOU GIVES A SHIT.

Oh yeah, and yay windoz, linux sux etc etc whatever

P.S. Learn English, it helps immensely when trying to make your point, IN ENGLISH.

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